Confessions At 3am
by redraisin
Summary: Palex fluff. It's 3am, they're both awake. The title is pretty self explanatory. Oneshot.


**a/n: Just a little Palex fluff, set post season 6, so minor spoilers relating to that. And I'm throwing this one out to They-Call-Me-Orange who's brilliant Icarus Complex inspired me to dust off my keyboard. Go read that. It is very very different in the best possible way. **

**As always, feedback/ reviews are always most welcomed/appreciated. This is from Alex's POV**

Something causes me to wake up, despite having only been asleep a few hours. The room is quiet and dark, other then the faint red glow spilling out from the alarm clock display. The numbers slowly sharpen from fuzzy to crisp digits: 3:03 am.

I groggily turn over and reach my arm across the sheets. But instead of her comforting warmth I make contact with only cool fabric and night air.

One millisecond of rising panic is all that escapes though. This time. I hear the toilet flush down the hall. The little whine of the door as she tries to soundlessly slip back into the room. Our room.

And before you know it, she's next to me again, where she belongs, emanating warmth and safety. I instinctively roll into her and drape my arm across her belly.

She turns into me, her face pressed against my shoulder, her cheek feels cool against my skin, her breath tickles my neck as she whispers, "Did I wake you up?"

"No," I whisper back, my voice hoarse and dry.

She settles into me, into her nook inside my arm, but her belly lets out a cartoonish little burble that makes me laugh and her groan.

She turns away from me again and tries to re-settle herself.

"You okay?"

"Mmgh. My stomach likes to complain. I think maybe I'm coming down with something."

"Aaw," I whisper lowly as I instinctively start gently rubbing the soft swell of her stomach. "Maybe gorging yourself on chips and salsa tonight didn't help?" I'm sure she can make out my smile, despite the darkness.

"Did you just call me fat?" she abruptly responds, swatting my hand away.

"What?" I can't help but laugh again. She's too cute and too vain, even when she's ill at three in the morning.

"No Paigey, you're perfect," I say as I wrap my arm around her again and kiss her cheek softly.

This is met with a half-sigh, half-grunt as her body relents against mine. I can hear her breathing gradually slow as sleep begins to consume her.

"Y'know…Marco…" she slurs sleepily.

"I'm Alex," I whisper into her shoulder-blade, feeling her grin lazily spreading across her limbs.

"Nooo… Alex…. Marco… Did you notice how distant he was tonight? He looked kinda miserable."

"Oh," I yawn, slowly thinking back over the evening. "I guess…"

"Must be hard for him," she continues, voice slightly muffled against her pillow, "Living with all of us, with Dylan far far away…" her voice drifts off and the room is silent again.

But I can't help but consider what she's just said. I guess it really is hard for Marco, especially now with Dylan in Switzerland. He'd only signed up to live with Ellie and then Paige. And now he's got me thrust upon him into the bargain. Not to mention Jesse.

"Is it hard for you?" her voice cranks into life again, breaking the silence.

"Is what hard for me?"

"Living here. Like this."

"No, it's not hard at all," I whisper against her back and kiss the smoothness of her exposed shoulder.

She lifts her head slightly off her pillow, catching my face in a sleepy half-kiss, before relinquishing again.

"I meant, is it difficult for you… with Jesse here so much?"

It's funny how we always end up having the most important conversations when we're semi-conscious. She wouldn't dare ask me something so outright when we're both wide awake and thinking straight.

But when we're semi-comatose, or fairly drunk, or both, it seems easier. Safer. I think the darkness helps.

"I don't mind," I offer in answer to her question. "He's with Ellie again. And I'm happy for her. And I'm _very_ happy for me." I give her a quick squeeze as I say this and she runs her hand lightly across my arm, leaving a trail of hair standing to attention.

"That's sweet, hun…that you're happy for her…" she murmurs, her thumb gently kneading my forearm.

"Mm," I agree, pressing my lips against the back of her neck, sleep still evident in my heavy limbs, but with another familiar sensation starting to nag beneath my bones.

"You guys get on well don't you?" she states it more than asks is as she turns into me. "Better then her and I ever did."

"Mm, well, maybe you're too similar," I offer up absently, as I wrap both my arms around her now.

She looks at me then, and despite the darkness I can feel her eyes examining my face. Her breathing becomes more concentrated.

"Did you ever- y'know?" She raises her chin to look up at me, dark pools for eyes, anonymous face coupled with her familiar touch.

I raise my eyebrows, wordlessly questioning what exactly she is getting at.

"You and Ellie. Did you ever like her…like that?"

I smile at my girlfriend's gentle capacity for jealousy at 3am, with her body cocooned against mine.

"Me and Ellie, eh? Is that what you think?"

"I'm not saying I think it. I'm just asking… if you ever liked her in that way…that's all," her voice fades defensively and it makes the stupid, whipped part of me want to come to her rescue. "I mean, I suppose she is attractive," she delicately pushes on, before adding, "if you like that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I guess she is," I concede, as I twist a lock of Paige's hair around my finger.

I let the words hang in the air for a couple beats, knowing her pride won't let her pursue it any further, knowing that it's probably gnawing away inside of her by now.

"But I never really thought about it."

"Really?" her voice belying a degree of relief.

"Yeah, I dunno, guess my heart belonged to another…" I trail off.

"When did you know?" she asks me, the sleep, seeping away from her voice, always ready to be indulged by my endless devotion.

I cast my mind back like a fishing rod, waiting for it to hook onto one specific, tangible moment, like I always do. I wished I could say, "That time you leant me your Chem notes," or, "That time when you gripped my arm during Night Of The Living Dead."

But the truth was, I could never remember the exact, distinct moment, when I realised I was falling for her.

And it really did feel just like falling, like letting go and have the ground racing towards you and the air speeding against your chest, and your heart in your mouth and your hands outstretched waiting to crash on impact.

We were always careful and sarcastic and measured in how we were with each other, how we spoke, the fronts we put up. And one day I just began to let go. And so did she. And we collided.

"I think it was the first time I saw you wrapped in polyester," I utter at last.

"Shut-up," she giggles into my neck and lightly swats my arm.

"I thought, if Paige Michealchuck can bring herself to look like this, then she can't be the venomous stuck-up cheerleader I'd pegged her down as."

"You really thought that? I mean- that I was venomous… stuck-up?"

Okay, someone is paying more attention here then I thought. I can't control the sigh that cascades from my lips. I wearily rub my eyes to allow me to focus on her better.

"Paige, sweetheart… I didn't think that, alright. It's three in the morning. I really don't think that well at three in the morning."

"Mmkay," She mumbles, turning away from my grasp and making me wince slightly as she rolls onto my wrist.

"Paige," I whisper as I try and gather her up again, kiss away the misunderstanding, bumble my way over my clumsy words. "I thought… you were…the most beautiful girl in Degrassi, okay? Hands down, no contest. And I couldn't believe it when you began to talk to me like a human being, let alone deigning to work with me."

She turns around again, our faces just centimetres apart. Evidently my eyes have begun to adjust to the darkness, or maybe it's just dawn seeping through the blinds. Her lips are blue and parted, her eyelashes delicate and fluttering.

"I'm sorry about that," her voice is so low it's barely audible, but I can make out her meaning though the fingertip that's tracing my jawbone.

Still, I ask, "Sorry for what?"

"For how I was. Before. When I was mean to you."

This is new. Paige. Apologizing. Apologizing for things that are ancient history.

"Well, I wasn't exactly all charm and grace myself was I?" I reply, kissing her fingertip before she retracts it.

"No," she agrees. "You were a bully." She leans in and gives me an Eskimo kiss. "But I was mean beyond that. To you. And I wish I hadn't been."

I have to kiss her then. Too many late night revelations to go without a kiss.

"Funny how things work out, isn't it?" I murmur, brushing a loose strand away from her face.

She ducks her head and smiles again, before her stomach goes in for another audible nosedive.

"Ugh," she squirms, turning once more onto her back.

I resume my position as attentive girlfriend, complete with soothing ministrations. "Can I get you something for that?"

"No," she groans, a little louder then we've been talking up until now. "I checked, we have chewable asprin and that's about it right now."

"The pharmacy opens in a couple hours, I'll go out get you something then, okay?"

She pulls my arm over her completely and lifts the sheets up higher around us, readying to sink into the abyss once more.

"Alex," she begins quietly, "You know when I fell for you?"

"When I first slipped you some tongue?" I answer playfully, knowing full-well the reaction this would get, but still not quite prepared for the deftness of her elbow to my ribs.

"No," she admonishes me severely.

"Yeah I know, I know, the big Kevin Smith talk." She had told me this story several times. It was a good story afterall and I liked hearing her recount it.

How many girls could claim that a big movie director had made them come to terms with their own lesbian desires for their fellow classmate and encouraged them to race off into the sunset to lay claim to her? Paige always told the story like it _was_ a movie.

"It wasn't then," she replies simply.

"Oh," is all I can muster in surprise.

"It was the day of the college fair. When you got me- when we got stoned."

"Ah, so the drugs _do_ work," I quip, which she chooses to ignore.

"It was when we got into that fight… I mean, when I yelled at you, told you you didn't have a future. I had just blurted it right out, then and there, without thinking. Usual Paige. And the look in your eyes. You didn't fight me back, you didn't even try to. You just left me there in the girls washroom. And I was so lost without you there…"

"You mean you were so high," I butt in.

"I was high," she agrees, "but it was more than that. It was, it was this feeling of utter misery I had when I pushed you away. The second I did it, I just wanted it back, that moment again. I wanted you back. Because it wasn't true, and it killed me to think that you believed it was."

She turns back to me and holds my hand against her chest. "That's when I knew I was falling for you. I've said a lot of mean crappola to people, but… never did I regret anything so much as then."

"Are you sure it wasn't just guilt?" I smile back at her, inwardly revelling this new little disclosure.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand the question," she replies with a mock straight face.

She leans in and we share another lingering kiss as my hands gently start to creep lower.

"I love you Michaelchuck," I say softly into her ear, "I love how you keep surprising me…"

Her belly unleashes another gurgle as she wriggles again, "Ugh! Way to kill the moment, huh?" she moans. "So nearly perfect…"

"It was perfect," I say as I start to rise.


End file.
